Boy Scouts Camping/Canoe Trip

May 29 and 30, 2009

Ahoy!

In preparation for our Boy Scout High Adventure Camping/Canoe trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota in August, we had an camping/canoeing outing last weekend to work on our skills. Wow! Okay...so I guess my formal canoe instruction ended at 4H camp when I was in the sixth grade. I thought that it would be like riding a bike. I discovered it was not like riding a bike at all! The memories from my Downer 4H camp came did come flooding back though, and I remembered my canoe instructor, Rob always asking us, "I can canoe, can you?" It has been 34 years or so, but that line cracks me up every time. I must have said it about 50 times on Saturday.

My faithful canoeing partner was none other than Mr. Joe York from Coleridge. What a trooper! None of us knew what we were in for until our Scoutmaster Robert Colwell showed us the map. I recognized that maniacal twinkle in his eye. The map depicted the series of lakes in this cluster located in Fremont, NE. It was too late to back out when he showed us the order in which we would canoe and then portage the canoes to the next lake. I looked at Joe. He looked at me. We prayed. We struggled. We overcame and we became stronger. We were stretched in new and abnormal ways! We emerged stronger and vowed that we would be ready for the trip in August. Oh my! Thankfully, we do not have any photographs of this action... it was NOT pretty!

I hope to get a few more blogs done before we leave on Monday morning, but if not, I will look forward to starting the next leg of our summer journey together. I miss all of you already!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Fallon